Unraveled
by StrictlySomething
Summary: The Enterprise and her crew get sucked into another perilous situation, this time quite literally. Gen. Fic.


**Disclaimer: The wonderful world of Star Trek is not owned by me. I'm just the hapless student in a literary playground.**

**Warnings: Some severe language from our favorite Captain**

**Chapter One:**

They were well and truly fucked.

The released warp drive hadn't been enough to pull the _Enterprise_ out of range of the growing black hole in front of them. It had only bought them a few extra minutes at most.

The hairline cracks in the shield before him spread and thickened, ominous creaks and groans shook the floors and walls as the fractures spread into the ship's main infrastructure, and the lights flickered to a dim red as power redirected solely into feeding the stuttering engines and basic life support.

He sat for a moment in morbid horror as the black hole finished eating the _Narada's_ remains. They would be the next to disappear into the gloomy black before him.

A sinking feeling had settled in the pit of his stomach.

They were all going to die.

Spock. McCoy. Uhura. Pike. Chekov. Sulu. Scotty. His crew. The Vulcan survivors.

They were all going to _fucking _die.

Panic seized him at the thought.

_No, no, no, no. They couldn't die, that wasn't possible._

In the background, beyond the rushing sound growing in his ears, he could hear Scotty cursing violently into the com as he reported system failure after system failure.

Terrified, grim faces looked towards him. His felt his stomach tighten viciously at the thought that even in their final moments the officers were still looking to _him_. He was the acting Captain after all. He was supposed to be able to fix this.

But this wasn't something he could fix in one of his heroic spur of the moments that he was always pulling out of his ass.

The gravitational pull of the black hole was too strong for them to escape and they were going to die. They were going to be pulled apart in a vicious tug of war between gravity and their own failing engines.

And it was _unfair._

Because they had defeated the Romulans, they had saved Earth, they had gone above and _fucking _beyond the call of duty even though most of them hadn't even graduated from the academy yet and they weren't supposed to just die a horrible, fiery death out in the middle of space at the end of it all.

A voice in the back of his head was screaming.

_He killed them. This was his fault. He should have done something more. There had to be something that he'd missed._

And then it clicked. And in a way it was so _obvious._ He had forced it out of his mind because just a few days ago he hadn't even thought that it was possible. But it _was. _And how could he forget that when it was what had caused this whole mess in the first place.

They could just gothroughthe black hole. Like Nero, like Spock Prime.

It was a bat-shit crazy plan. Who knew what it'd do to the space time continuum. Who knew what'd be on the other side. Who knew if they'd even make it _to_ the other side.

But it was either bat-shit crazy or admitting that they were all going to be zapped out of existence and torn into a thousand tiny pieces.

And he just couldn't accept that.

He stood up resolutely, leaning on his good leg. _Funny how much getting grabbed by a giant red alien monster tongue began to hurt as time passed. The damn thing had better not have had poisonous saliva. _

"Scotty, I want you to cut power to the engines. Convert everything you've got into whatever it takes to hold us together when we fly through this thing."

There was a second's silence as his order echoed in everyone's head. To their ears, it probably sounded like he was giving up. Which he was, in a way.

_No, this was going to work. This was going to work. _This was going to work.

"Aye, Captain," the engineer said grimly.

The ship around him gave a particularly loud shudder before he heard the engines falter for one last time. The effect was immediate as the _Enterprise _no longer grappled with the gravitational pull and slid towards the black hole at a rapidly gaining speed.

The view screen before him went flat as even more power was drained into the ship's life functions.

"Thirty seconds until we come into direct contact with the black hole, sir," Sulu said faintly.

They didn't have much time. He took a steadying breath, the dull pain in his throat and ribs sharpening for a moment, and opened ship-wide communication.

The fear was a tangible thing. He could see it clearly in his officers' eyes. They didn't want to die. They didn't _deserve _to die. Over the past few hours they had all been through hell and back again and a stubborn strength had forced its way into each of their hearts. There was resolve that hadn't been there a day ago and it'd take more than a giant all-consuming black hole to get rid of that.

"Buckle up, ladies and gentlemen; we're in for a bumpy ride. Kirk out."

He made a note to work on his motivational speeches when they got out of this.

"Twenty seconds, sir," he heard Sulu say in front of him.

He made momentary eye contact with Spock. The Vulcan's appearance was deceptively calm, but Jim didn't miss the intensity in his eyes, the slight tilt of his eyebrows. No doubt the gears in his head whirring at an impossible rate, going over percentages, ratios, statistics, memory logs, anything, _anything_ that might get them out of here.

Of course, if there was anyone that could figure out the implications of flying through black hole on only conjecture and equations drawn up quickly in their mind, it would be Spock. Jim could mark the second the realization that _they just might get out of this mess alive _hit the Vulcan. His eyebrows rose minutely in discovery and he tilted his head slightly, "Captain—"

Jim gave a tightlipped smile, "I know Spock, I know."

"Ten seconds," Sulu counted down, sweat appearing on his brow.

He took his customary pose in the Captain's chair, gripping the handrails tightly in anticipation as he stared into the face of their possible annihilation. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, regaining his calm.

If only Bones were here. He'd have liked to have his friend by his side at a moment like this. But the man was hard at work down in Medical Bay, not letting a thing like impending doom get in the way of his work.

The ship had started to tremble again.

"Five seconds, Captain."

"Four."

The trembling had turned into heavy tremors. Jim had to grip his armrests tightly just to remain seated.

"Three."

He opened his eyes.

"Two."

He leaned forward ever so slightly in anticipation. One corner of his mouth pulled up in a smirk in a reflexive habit he'd developed over the years. _Don't let them see your fear. _

"One."

The ship rocked forward in the impossible energy.

And then space and time collapsed.

It was an indescribable feeling not unlike (but still completely different from) how he felt the first time he'd ever used a transporter. He was being pulled apart and put back together, a loud inescapable barrage of noise whirled around him and yet there was complete silence, blinding images and bright colors swept past him at lightning speeds, he was nothing, he was everything, and as soon as it started there was a fundamental shift, so slight that even a Vulcan wouldn't have been able to sense it.

He was leaning forward in his seat, staring at the blank view screen before him as the _Enterprise _barreled forward.

He blinked, breathing harshly.

"Mr. Sulu?"

Sulu snapped out of his own reverie and looked at his equipment.

"Sir, the black hole, it's gone!"

"We must haff gone through it!" Chekov exclaimed.

_Yes!_

He turned abruptly to his first officer, who was intently analyzing his working scanners.

"Spock?"

"Mr. Chekov appears to be correct, Captain. The anomaly is no longer present anywhere on our current scanners. It seems that it ended as soon as we exited, although it is impossible to say for certain without our scanning devices returned to full function." Spock said formally.

He let out a sigh of relief, sinking further into his chair as he smiled fully. _They were alive! _

Relieved laughter and sounds of joy surrounded him as the news of their survival finally made it past everyone's shell-shocked exteriors.

He opened the com, "Bridge to Engineering. Mr. Scott, how's it going down there?"

"We're in a bit of a spot, Captain. Ship's compromised on several decks and power's down eighty-seven percent, runnin' on impulse power only. There have been several small impacts; my guess's the remains o' the Romulan ship that escaped the blast from the warp drives are rubbin' up against us. That and shields are down completely. The poor lass's barely holdin' together."

"Can you get her back to working order? We're going to need all of our equipment up here in working order."

"I might be able to stabilize the systems for a couple of hours. She's a mighty fine ship, but she's not gonna last much longer."

"We're going to need everything you can get us, Scotty."

"Aye, I'll see what I can do, sir."

"Kirk out."

He leaned back a little further in his seat, avoiding a wince at a particularly painful twinge from his back, "Mr. Spock. Do you have our location?"

"Impossible to tell at the current time, Captain. Insufficient data. We will need to wait until Mr. Scott can access more of our power reserves."

"Any insight of your own, Mr. Spock that might give us a clue?"

"As I said before, there is not enou—"

"A guess, Mr. Spock. Do you have a guess on where we might be?"

An eyebrow rose and the Vulcan smoothly said.

"I postulate that we are in the same area as we were before encountering the spacial anomaly. While no actual event like this has ever been recorded, theoretical studies on the subject have suggested that a broad range of inter-dimensional travel is theoretically possible when an object passes through a black hole but there have been only a few, unaccountable theorems that have suggested concrete travel across long distances through a single dimension of space."

Jim winced at the mouthful, "Meaning, Mr. Spock?"

"We should still be within the same solar system, Captain. If there are any changes I suspect that they would be of the dimensional space/time variety."

He nodded, his own thoughts following a similar path.

"In fact," Spock continued, stepping forward, "While I have only my own thoughts on the matter, I suspect that the _Narada_'s experience followed previously mentioned theoretical expectations. That being the case, there is a sixty six point seven percent certainty that, as long as the effects of the black hole are assumed to be constant, we are in the same location but in a different, and currently impossible to determine, time."

Jim blinked, "Sixty six _point _seven percent certain, Mr. Spock?"

"Sixty six point seven eight three seven percent to be somewhat accurate, Captain."

"Sixty six point seven eight three percent—"

"Sixty six point seven eight three _seven_ percent, Captain."

"Yes, thank you Mr. Spock," Jim said wryly, both impressed and unnerved by the specification. _And only somewhat accurate by Spock's standards._

He turned back to look at the blank view screen thoughtfully, "I'd say sixty six point seven eight three _seven _percent certainly gives us pretty good odds. Uhura, are you able to pick up any transmissions in the area? If we're still in range of our solar system we should have some chatter."

"Most transmission power was cut in the loss of power. And I'm not picking up anything on the emergency lines left open."

"Chekov, Sulu, anything?"

"No, Capt'n."

Sulu piped up, "I have radar readings on the immediate area around the ship, sir. We're only picking up small amounts of debris, probably from the _Narada _as Scotty said."

Jim rested his chin on his hand. The ship was about to collapse. They were most likely in another time. And depending on that time, they may or may not have anyone to help them. _Hell, what if the Federation didn't even exist yet? What were they supposed to do then? _

He had no idea in hell how they were going to get back to their own time. _If they even could get back._

To make it even better, they hadn't even had time to breath, let alone rest in about sixteen hours. He hadn't slept in over thirty. _Last time he thought it'd be funny to go out partying the night before being called in front of Starfleet for beating a damned test. _

And the exhaustion he already felt deep down in his bones wasn't just lack of sleep. A few counts of physically fighting for his life (_damn, his body ached)_, the responsibility he felt for the entire crew, knowing that every decision he made determined whether they lived or died and that _some of them had died and it was his fault_, the emotional cost of losing most of the cadet Fleet that morning and then watching as Vulcan had been completely destroyed; it had all taken a toll that he could feel painstakingly well.

And as soon as Scotty got everything back online it would all start again.

He breathed in deeply, ignoring the twinge of pain that jolted through his bruised (_because he didn't have time for them to be any more than that) _ribs caused him.

But for now, _they were alive. _They were alive, and they were going to get through this.

"McCoy to Bridge."

Jim's smile reappeared as he heard the familiar voice. He opened the com, "Kirk here. What can I do for ya, Bones?"

"Don't Bones me, Jim. Here I am with several patients in critical condition, actively in surgery with another, and you won't stop throwing the ship around like a god damned football."

He saw Spock raise an eyebrow and cleared his throat, "Nice to hear from ya too, Bones, but we've already got that covered. You'll be happy to know that we swept the opposition off their feet. Won by a landslide."

"Landslide, my ass. Any closer would've had us singing Dixie, kid. And while you're bragging, you mind giving me some power down here? I don't know how you're expecting me to be able to do anything more complicated than an appendectomy on just backup."

"I have no doubt that you could bring the entire fleet back from the brink of death with just a tricorder and a roll of duct tape, Bones."

The good doctor let loose some choice words that only had Jim's grin grow larger. He cut the man off mid-rant, "Scotty's working on the power now, Bones. I'm sure we'll be seeing the effects of his marvelous work momen—"

The lights flickered from a hazy red, to their normal clear bluish sheen and the familiar beeps of system restoration emitted from the several stations nearby.

The view screen in front of them flickered before polarizing completely, giving him a view of space before them. His smile fell flat as he took in the view.

"Gotta go, Bones."

"Damn it Ji—"

Jim cut off the transmission and stood up.

"Spock," he asked, "What's our location?"

Because this couldn't be home.

He could see the familiar design of the _Narada _in the debris that was before them. The blast from warp drives had made quick work of most of it, leaving only tale tail pieces behind.

But beyond that lay something else entirely. Wrecked ships, in all shapes and sizes, were haphazardly spread across the entire expanse of space before him. Similar to the scene that had greeted them as they'd warped into Vulcan space, but on a scale a hundred times larger. _A thousand times larger._

They had flown themselves into a massive burial ground.

And he didn't know if he could get them out.

**To Be Continued.**

**Author's Note: **

**So there you have it! My first attempt at some Star Trek action. As you all probably know, the Star Trek universe is a pretty complex one full of a lot of intricate detail and personality. This fic is to test the waters, so to speak. See how I do outside of the kiddy pool. I feel pretty good about it, but as the author my opinion is probably a **_**tad**_** biased. Your thoughts and advice would be greatly appreciated.**

**As for the harsh language on Jim's side of things; life and death situations tend to bring out the more colorful language for most people. **

**It's been really fun so far. Here's to hoping it remains fun. **

**As always, updates are sporadic.**

**Thanks for reading,**

**StrictlySomething**


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